


Little Fictions

by Kate88



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-15
Updated: 2020-12-05
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:08:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 2,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27024808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kate88/pseuds/Kate88
Summary: Okay.  I've been struggling with Striketober and listening to A LOT of Elbow and a very random idea waltzed into my head, hand in hand with the first chapter.  This is going to take the form of a series of drabbles with some sort of connection to each track on the Elbow album 'Little Fictions'.  I'll include the line that prompted the idea for the fic at the top of each one.
Relationships: Charlotte Campbell Ross/Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott & Cormoran Strike, Robin Ellacott/Cormoran Strike
Comments: 68
Kudos: 107





	1. Magnificent (She Says)

**Author's Note:**

> Okay. I've been struggling with Striketober and listening to A LOT of Elbow and a very random idea waltzed into my head, hand in hand with the first chapter. This is going to take the form of a series of drabbles with some sort of connection to each track on the Elbow album 'Little Fictions'. I'll include the line that prompted the idea for the fic at the top of each one.

_This is where the echoes swell to nothing on the tide  
And where a tiny pair of hands  
finds a sea-worn piece of glass  
and sets it like a sapphire in her mind._\- Elbow. 'Magnificent (She Says)'. 

He's almost certain he doesn't want kids, although her pragmatic _that's just bloody self-indulgent_ has, more recently, given him pause for thought.

Still, he's pretty positive that it's not the life for him.

_Although..._

He finds it surprisingly easy to conjure the image.

A wintry Cornish beach under a slate grey sky.

A little girl. His dark, unruly curls. Her mother's grey-blue eyes.

She'd ask about sea-glass and he would tell her about how the tide weathers something dangerous into something beautiful.

A small, warm hand in his.

A flash of rose-gold hair, whipped by the wind.

He could do it. If she was there, he thinks, he could do it.


	2. Gentle Storm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 3 posts in one day. Who do I think I am?

_Gentle storm  
rage my way_ \- Elbow. 'Gentle Storm'. 

Getting to know her is like learning the weather.

Breezy morning greetings.

Stormy arguments when she’s been reckless.

Warm laughter that puffs his chest because _he’s_ caused it.

Frosty conversations with annoying clients. Usually blokes. Usually when they think they’re being charming.

Squally anger when she feels taken for granted. Especially by him.

Sunny smiles when she knows her theory is better than his.

Grey faced after multiple nights of surveillance in a row. He remembers to get her a Kitkat at lunchtime.

As a man part-raised beside the sea, he has a lot of time for watching the weather.


	3. "Trust the Sun"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a chaotic day here, so will catch up on Striketober with a double tomorrow! 
> 
> This one is so much wordier than I'd intended these to be, but he wouldn't bloody stop going on about her.

_'There’s a girl a world away who sees love in other people.'_ 'Trust the Sun'. Elbow. 

People are mostly kind.

People have bad days, bad months, bad years; they deserve a couple of chances.

Gratitude should be freely given.

Apologies should be made (and accepted) with grace.

Faith can be restored with perfectly made tea and perfectly judged words.

You should always try to help.

Hope is free. Sometimes it’s all they have to give.

Robin believes these things because she’s _good_.

When they first met that morning in his war-torn office, he had been surrounded by _bad_ for so long that he’d almost stopped noticing. Bad mother, bad leg, bad Charlotte, bad business. _Good_ was a jab to the nose, a wild windmill swing to the stomach.

She’s _good_.

If it sounds annoying, or boring, it’s not. 

It’s revelatory.

One day, he started writing the things he knows Robin to believe in the back of a notebook. He kept on adding to his list. They have worked together for a long time now and he knows that _good_ is the bare minimum of what his partner is. 

That notebook, long since full, remains in his desk drawer. When things feel particularly bad, he re-reads it. 

She's _good_. He can be too.


	4. All Disco

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had really, really intended that these would all be Robin/Strike-centric BUT....Dave bloody Polworth. I have no explanation for it. I tried to ignore him, but he was very insistent. So here you have it- the entirely unconnected to Strike and Robin musings of our favourite Cornish Nationalist :/

_Let’s be the burned  
Laughing at not having learned.  
Let’s be a hundred and five, you and I,  
And sing out a tune of regret to the moon._\- Elbow. 'All Disco'.

They used to howl at the moon. 

There was nothing else to do in the depths of winter, in a fishing village at the edge of the world.

They left; him, Diddy and the rest. Gulls flung onto the wind. Off to bigger cities for chances at bigger lives.

They’ll be back. He was just the first one to heed the call, a riptide pulling the blood home. 

So he’ll be there; keeping the bar stools warm, the home fires burning. And maybe, if they’re not too old and decrepit by then, they can howl at the moon once more.


	5. Head for Supplies

_Across the city there's a golden chill  
a rare holding still,  
as if somebody's gonna sing.  
A dip in tempo for the castanet shoes,  
no blues and twos,  
as if somebody's gonna sing_. Elbow. _'Head for Supplies'_

London doesn’t offer up much by way of stillness. It has to be taken where it can be found.

The two of them working through the night.

Robin asleep on the sofa; open file on her lap, mug of tea gone cold on the floor.

Offering her an old, itchy jumper because she’d shivered. She’d tugged it on, rolling up the cuffs to free her hands. It had looked… _correct._

The autumn sun spilling gold down an empty Denmark Street as they made their way to the newsagents to re-stock milk and biscuits before Pat arrived.

When he’d looked over at her on their way back from their supply run. 

Lighting a cigarette, he’d turned to pass comment on the cheeriness of the shop owner given the early hour, and the city fell- for a single moment that could have been a skipped heartbeat- completely silent. 

Her breath had been hanging in front of her, suspended in the chilled October air. Her hair turned briefly to flame in the early morning sun. She was still wearing the ancient jumper.

And there was nothing. 

No sirens. 

No council workers yelling at each other as they loaded bins onto the back of the lorry. 

No tinny music issuing from the shop they had just left. 

Only a single second of quiet. As if the city had just inhaled, anticipating the confession that has been on the tip of his tongue for months.


	6. Firebrand and Angel

_One day in a whirlwind she'll call for a late one,  
stay for a lifetime_. Elbow. 'Firebrand and Angel'.

She’d arrived late one night, in a flurry of rose-gold hair. 

Helping herself to whisky, she’d gone through the details of the investigation. What they’d all missed.

Apart from her.

She’d smiled, pleased with herself, and that smile had been it; the doing and undoing of everything.

He’d called her _exceptional_ once. What did he want apart from that? Apart from _exceptional_?

So he’d kissed her and, after one- admittedly surprised- squeak, she’d kissed him back.

And that, as far as they were both concerned, was that. A done deal. A fait accompli. What more was there possibly to say?


	7. K2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out I didn't fully appreciate how much this track was about Brexit and David Cameron :/ But dammit, I will go down with this 'ship, even if that means making the most tenuous of links.

_I’m given to believing in love,  
I’ve written the word in my blood.  
I’ve seen it make a heaven of backstreet, bedsit and bomb site._ Elbow. _K2_

_Love makes fools of us all._

He’d quoted Shakespeare one evening, whilst they had been watching the house of yet another cheating spouse. Her Decree Absolute, received that morning, had been sitting in its envelope on the back seat. She had snorted her agreement.

There are months of distance between her and that sheet of paper now though. The storm of hurt, embarrassment and anger has long since blown itself out and Robin thinks she probably wouldn’t agree with him so readily anymore.

These days, when she thinks of love and the guises it presents itself in, she thinks of Oonagh and Margot. Anna and Kim. Leonora and Orlando. Ted and Joan. Ilsa and Nick. 

_Love makes fools of us all._

Except, she thinks, remembering champagne and lavender and _Narciso_ and a perfect birthday night, when it doesn’t.


	8. Montparnasse

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *ducks and covers*

_Don’t talk like we’re stuck in a lift.  
Why would I be missing you so violently?  
We’re all the hero when directing the scene._ Elbow. _Montparnasse_.

The thing that no one had ever really understood about Cormoran Blue Strike was how very good with words he had been. All they had seen was a surly profile, a boxer’s nose, disinclination to small talk and the barely concealed distaste for their principles and their privilege.

But his words? Nothing else, ever, had made her feel the way his words had done. As if she were something worth saving.

_I’m yours. I’ve always been yours. I’ll always be yours._

_I love you._

_You don’t have to be alone._

_I’ll take care of you._

_There’s nothing that could make me leave you. Stop loving you._

_IloveyouIloveyouIloveyouIloveyou._

Benediction and supplication in one. 

They’d had no fucking idea. 

To be loved by Cormoran Strike was to be invincible. She had clung to those words, cleaved them to her. When everything else was pitch black _I’ll take care of you_ had shimmered like a light from the distant shore. A promise of calm waters. A safe harbour. 

Who in their right mind would let that go? So, Charlotte thinks wryly, is it any wonder that she- in her very much _un-right_ mind- has been left grasping at late-night whispered prayers and promises like a starving child. 

That’s why his messages hurt so much. He knows what he can do with words; condemnation or redemption. Instead, he withholds the syllables that could deliver her from evil and gives her banal platitudes and a warning in their place.

_I’m changing my number._

She knows then, what she has refused to believe for years. He’s done. He’s ridding himself of their last tenuous connection. She feels like Theseus without the golden thread, lost in the caverns of her life and devoured whole by a monster who has never been too far from her heels.

The papers are full of him- _them_ \- now. They are calling them the most talented detectives in the city. They are singing their praises from the rooftops, from the rafters, from every lofty place in London. And she knew she knew _she knew_ he could be this brilliant. 

The phone stays resolutely silent after her final message, and she wonders if his Robin (because she is _his_ Robin, though they don’t appear to have figured that out yet) knows. 

How terribly, terribly lucky she is. 

How much his words are worth. 

That he’ll save her again and again with _just_ his words if he has to. 

But then she thinks, scanning the few photos she has been able to find of the junior partner, Robin doesn’t look like a woman who needs saving.

And maybe that’s the point.


	9. Little Fictions

_We protect our little fictions  
Like it’s all we are.  
Little wilderness momentos,  
But there’s only you and me here._ Elbow. _Little Fictions_

They are by themselves in the office one Tuesday afternoon when he tells her.

He says it because he can’t _not_ say it anymore. The idea that this _thing_ doesn’t exist has become a fiction that is completely impossible to maintain. 

They have shown each other all the tiny, broken pieces of themselves. Taken them out, dusted them off and offered them up for the other’s assessment. 

_We’re the same, you and me. We’re made from the same stuff._

The truths of their pasts are easy to confront because the endings of those stories are known. 

The truths of the present though, are more slippery things. Found in the timbre of a laugh, a particular quality of silence, dark eyes meeting blue across a room. Those things that, when looked at too hard or for too long, disappear as easily as the promise of water in a desert. They’re harder to pin down, but not impossible.

After all, haven’t they built their entire reputation based on their unerring ability to get to the truth of things?

So he tells her.

“I love you. I’m in love with you.”

It could be the ruination of everything. It could be the making of them. But whatever it is, at least it’s the truth.


	10. Kindling

_I could fold to the cold of these  
January streets,  
but your smile in the half-light was  
pure pillow-print cheek._ Elbow. _'Kindling'._

Dim grey dawn falls through the condensation streaked window.

He should be up already, but damp January mornings don’t hold much appeal when she’s soft and warm and sleeping beside him.

He mumbles his intention to leave into tousled strawberry-blonde hair. They really are busy. January is always busy. 

Blue-grey eyes half-open into his. Her smile is one of someone not quite awake. 

“Go.”

A gentle nudge of her foot, edging him out into the cold.

And maybe it’s because he’s still getting to know this Robin; the one that stays the night and has messy morning hair and pillow-creased cheeks. 

Or maybe it’s because the rain has begun to patter on the slate above them. 

Maybe it’s just because she released him willingly with a smile rather than insisting he remains.

Whatever it is, he decides he can stay put a little longer after all.


End file.
